How a couple of country people live a full and frugal life in the city.

Adventures in Baking: Pomegranate and Cherry Mandelbrot

Last year, Kara took a class on Turkish cooking at the BCAE. One of the new ingredients she learned about was pomegranate molasses. She bought a bottle to make some of the recipes she learned at home, but didn’t end up using all of it. I got sick of looking at it in the fridge, so this weekend I decided to use some of it. After some googling, I found the recipe for these delicious cookies, Pomegranate and Sour Cherry Mandelbrot. (Mandelbrot are a type of Jewish cookie that I have never heard of; they look like Biscotti to me.)

They were pretty easy to make and they taste great. The pomegranate molasses add a sweet tangy flavor that is hard to put your finger on … but you like it.

If you try this recipe out, my suggestion is to make sure you pat your cherries dry after you plump them up in warm water – this recipe does not like wet dough. Also, rather than spoon the dough out onto the pan directly from the bowl, I would spoon it onto a lightly oiled counter and roll it into two logs. Then put the logs onto the pan and push them down just a bit. They will naturally spread out and you will get taller cookies. Mine came out to be about 1.5 inches tall and 7 inches wide at the widest, but I didn’t try this trick.